Monday Reading

Steve Lopez: It's 90 degrees in November, the full glory and perennial curse of Southern California on fierce display. Devil winds, hill-hopping infernos, smoked mansions, torched trailers, barren freeways, and brilliant sunsets lingering in low-hanging canopies of burnt dreams.

Are we all crazy? Don't live here, says the wind, the trembling earth, the parched land whose natural inclination is to explode in flame every year about now.

But we do.

Dan Barry: SPRINGFIELD, Mass.

As Election Night made way for a new day, a pastor named Bryant Robinson Jr. clicked off his television to accept a sleep of sweet promise. His mostly black congregation now had two blessings awaiting it in 2009: the inauguration of the first African-American president and the finished construction of a new church.

Give praise.